Speaker
Najeeba Syeed & Michon True Smith
Religious Pluralism and Conflict Resolution in the Workplace
Bio
Najeeba Syeed is the inaugural El-Hibri Endowed Professor of Interfaith Studies and Executive Director of the Interfaith Institute at Augsburg University, and the first Muslim woman to earn tenure there. For two decades she has been an award-winning educator, mediator, and speaker in conflict resolution, restorative justice, and interfaith studies -- with executive roles including chief of staff on the Los Angeles City Council and executive director of the Western Justice Center Foundation. She is joined by Michon True Smith, Managing Director of the Interfaith Institute, who leads its grants, fundraising, partnerships, and communications, drawing on twenty years across education, health care, housing, and immigrant-serving nonprofits.
The big questions
The kind of questions this session opens up.
- It is far easier to grow an economy than to lower the temperature between two neighbors. Why is the cheaper problem the one we can’t solve?
- Is peace the absence of conflict, or the presence of something we have forgotten how to build?
- Can people who disagree about almost everything still build something together, and what does it cost each of them?
- What if reconciliation is not the soft part of development, but the hardest infrastructure of all?